Meeting

Performance, Meeting: Reading Krleža’s dreams to Kožarić’s Matoš The Heart Changes, Musum of Broken Relationships project, Zagreb, 2016. Božena Končić Badurina and Miloš Đurđević participated in the performance.

Reading  Miroslav Krleža’s  dreams to Ivan Kožarić’s sculpture of poet A.G.Matoš on Strossmayer’s promenade, starts from the unusual fact that Matoš and Krleža never met, although they lived and worked in Zagreb at the same time for a considerable period of time (1909-1914). There is a note in Krleža’s records that as a very young poet in 1911, on one occasion in a café he wanted to approach Matoš and show him his poems, but he lacked determination. According to another of Krleža’s notes from the Ancient Days (1916), Matoš, already seriously ill, wanted to meet Krleža after reading his first printed text for the drama “Legend”.  Retaining his controversial attitude towards Matoš’s works and person, Krleža did not respond to the call. However, he attended the funeral and said goodbye to Matoš in his own way.

The meeting that this performance evokes takes place through the third Croatian great free-thinking artist, Ivan Kožarić, who maded the sculpture of Matoš on a bench on Strossmayer’s promenade, in a position of light leisure and anticipation of what is yet to come and see in this area. Krleža’s dreams from 1943, which are read in the performance to the Matoš’s sculpture, are a gloomy copy of the reality from which they originate and into which they virtuously disintegrate in diary entries. And the relevance of these records for everyone ‘today and here’ is astonishing and prophetic. However, Krleža’s vulnerable complex personality is most expressive in his written dreams, and perhaps Matoš would get to know Krleža best through his dreams.